URGENT: Swedish Government to Deport Torture & Execution Risk RS In Hours – PLEASE TAKE ACTION NOW

URGENT: RS is going to be deported at 6:55am Friday October 21 from Arlanda airport. He has been in Sweden since 2001. His lawyer, Gunnel Stenberg, promised to file his case with the EU Court of Human Rights but – according to Nasi Peyghambarian who has helped RS in every possible way in the past 3 days- informed her client at 20:30 hours the night before the deportation that her computer was broken and she was not able to send the client a copy of file. Rasoul Benavand from the Borderless Organization confirmed last night that the authorities in Märsta have not received any indication from the lawyer regarding an ongoing complaint with the European Court! Needless to say that Mission Free Iran on behalf of the ICRIR and on Rahim’s request had contacted Rahim’s lawyer and offered our assistance and put special emphasis on our legal capabilities in European level.

History in Iran
In Tir 1369, very close to Daneshjoo Park, he was arrested near Alborz High School on charges of being against the regime – he was kept in prison for 1 year & 1 month. In Khordad 1371-1373, he was arrested again and held in the detention facilities of the information ministry. He was then working with the student movement in Amir Kabir University. His torturers during those 2 years were Afshar and Esmaeli. He was badly tortured and one of the methods used was keeping him hanged in the air by 1 hand; as a result the joint in his right wrist was totally destroyed. At one point, he was moved to a hospital; a nurse sent information about him out from the hospital to friends. The friends planned to take him out of the hospital by taking him for an X-ray scan in which the room has to be emptied of agents. In that way, they manged to take him out of the hospital. He lived in secret underground for 8-9 months in Tehran, then went to Orumieh then to Turkey, on to Italy, and on 28 March 2001 arrived in Sweden. Those others detained with him that he remembers from the time of imprisonment are Ali Reza Shekar-Riz & Kiyomars Abtahi.

His position in MEK has been to mobilize people and organize protests.

TAKE ACTION:
Please send an urgent memo to Sweden’s Minister for Migration and Asylum Policy, Tobias Billström. Please immediately send the below letter or your own version to the following email addresses: registrator@foreign.ministry.se, guterres@unhcr.org, swest@unhcr.org, hq@iom.int, maja.kocijancic@ec.europa.eu

Please also urgently enter into the webforms for contacting Tobias Billström, Swedish Minister for Migration and Asylum Policy and his Press Secretary Linda Norberg. Please also visit the Migrationsverket site and follow the instructions to send a complaint there.
You will need Rahim’s case number: 9553419.

To Tobias Billström, Swedish Minister for Migration and Asylum Policy, Regarding the Illegal Refoulement of Opposition Activist RS.

Iranian refugee RS is going to be deported at 6:55am Friday October 21 (just a few hours from now) from Arlanda airport. He has been in Sweden since 2001. His lawyer, Gunnel Stenberg, promised to file his case with the EU Court of Human Rights but informed his client at 20:30 hours the night before the deportation that his computer was broken and he was not able to complete the filing.

This is an illegal deportation:

1) He is a member of MEK with assigned responsibilities: he is responsible for mobilizing people as well as for organizing protest actions.

2) He reports detention and torture by the regime in Iran. He reports being and imprisoned in Evin for a one year period, then released for about a year before being detained again by the Information Ministry for a period of two years.

I would like to note that we have stopped about a dozen illegal deportations of Iranians by the Swedish government. Every single case was a clear torture/execution risk. We have documented all of these cases, and several of them have been covered by the Swedish media. The Swedish government is behaving criminally, and this is yet one more instance. All of the deportations that we have stopped have received leave to stay in Sweden within a month of stopping their deportation.

Finally, regarding the situation of members of MEK in Iran: although I am sure you are aware of these cases, I will just note a few cases in which family members of MEK or MEK members have suffered torture or execution in just the past year or two:

– Mohammad Ali Haj Aghaei, Jafar Kazemi, and Ali Saremi all have been executed within the past one year because they had family members in MEK/Camp Ashraf.
– Mohsen Dokhmechi, a MEK member, was detained as a political prisoner until his death by cancer (the regime refused to allow him to receive medical treatment for his cancer)
– Hadi Abedi Bakhoda, a MEK member, is currently detained as a political prisoner. He is a paraplegic and wheelchair bound. He was subjected to 51 lashes while strapped to his wheelchair this past summer.

It is illegal under international law, under EU law and under Swedish national law to deport anyone to a country where they are at risk of persecution. RS is at clear risk for torture and possibly execution. We demand that the Swedish government immediately halt this and all other deportations to Iran.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]